Last Tuesday we had a fun time. In January of last year, when we took students to London for J-term, one of the plays we got to see was a World War I play about a teenager and his horse, and the play was called War Horse. Steven Spielberg made the book/play into a film, and Mer and I came up with the idea to use the film as a reunion. We invited all the London students, and on Tuesday we headed to a theater in Macedonia, just north of our home. We had six of the thirteen students show up for the film, and it was great fun to see them together again.

The film was quite good. Spielberg made some changes to the story, but nothing that detracted from the experience. In fact, the small changes made for some good discussions among the eight of us after the movie was over. Mer and I were invited to go out for coffee/hot chocolate with three of our former students, so we went along with that, and had a good time visiting for about forty-five minutes.

As far as we could remember, the film made these changes from the play:
– The film made the brothers into landlord and tenant farmer.
– The film added a grandfather, instead of a mother, for the French girl who fell in love with the horses.
– The film added two German soldiers in place of part of the role that the nice German officer played in the play.
– The nice German officer of the play became a German sergeant who had a much smaller role in the play.
– The bet between the brothers in the play was if the horse could plow a set distance; in the film the horse had to plow the whole field.
– The play used French and German with no translation; the film just used English with accents.

Both the film and play are worth seeing, but Mer and I thought the play was more magical because of the full-sized puppets.